Forum rules
There are no such things as "stupid" questions. However if you think your question is a bit stupid, then this is the right place for you to post it. Please stick to easy to-the-point questions that you feel people can answer fast. For long and complicated questions prefer the other forums within the support section.
Before you post please read how to get help

this data is for the 1st machine; there are several others. ideally, the /Public directory of any system that's logged on -- should be available to any of the other machines; these are all on one WiFi Net; the WiFi router has a firewall to block any traffic from the outside net.

** You are using two different methods to share the same folder and they don't match.

I'm not sure why you have two shares of the /home/mike/Public folder with different settings - one requires credentials the other does not. As long as they have two different labels I suppose that's OK.

using NEMO I clicked the NETWORK key. this offered "WORKGROUP" -- which opened, and revealed SMB within. attempting to connect to SMB -- timed out.

I've had this work -- only on occasion -- but when it does -- a machine ICON appears labeled acker4. it this happens -- i'm able to connect. i'd like it to connect all the time. if a "workgroup" appears it's no use. how can i get rid of workgroup forever?

i shouldn't give out the admin password for the main resource (acker4)

The samba password doesn't have to match the login password. If you log into that machine with an XXX password you can make the samba password YYY.

You can also have different users and passwords as long as you make sure the permissions on the /home/mike/Public folder itself - I'm talking about Linux permissions not samba permissions - allows a write to them.

If you want everyone to have read / write access to everything in the share you might consider adding one more line to the share definition:

The share will still require a user name and password to gain access but after it is accepted everything in that share will be as "mike" - at least for that share only. This eliminates any potential permissions issues.

EDIT: Way .. way past my bedtime. I will check back tomorrow.

Please add a [SOLVED] at the end of your original subject header if your question has been answered and solved.

if i remember rigtht we had also discussed shifting this to an FTP solution. That would necessitate activating an FTP server on the man machine ("acker4").

the machines here all work with a WiFi net. I use an ASUS WiFi router and that does effect a Firewall against the external (Charter.net).

an FTP solution would probably listen on port 21. it would be critical that that port were not exposed to the external net.

thoughts?

for right now I'll just re-test after I run the service restart smbda on "acker4". that might fix it. one of the things's I've noticed in trying to get Samba working is that...... I get inconsistent results: sometimes it works, sometimes it takes a while to connect and sometimes it times out.

right now it's too hot to run tests. I'll turn the A/C on about 1600 (2000 GMT) and give it a try a bit later,--

this may be the key that i'm missing: i don't think i have that group let alone be a member of it:

** Made myself a member of the sambashare group: sudo gpasswd -a tester sambashare
Why LMDE does not make you a member of this group by default is a mystery.

this may be the key that i'm missing: i don't think i have that group let alone be a member of it:

** Made myself a member of the sambashare group: sudo gpasswd -a tester sambashare
Why LMDE does not make you a member of this group by default is a mystery.

In your case it doesn't matter if you are a member of the sambashare group. sambashare is related to usershare and you don't use Nemo to create samba shares. You have them all defined in smb.conf.

i think -- if i re-run the service restart smbda that it might get going again,.... that, i think, may be the difference between this morning's test and last night's.

The samba services are not in the habit of stopping by themselves. If you need to do this every time you boot you have bigger problems than samba.

if i remember rigtht we had also discussed shifting this to an FTP solution. That would necessitate activating an FTP server on the man machine ("acker4").
the machines here all work with a WiFi net. I use an ASUS WiFi router and that does effect a Firewall against the external (Charter.net).
an FTP solution would probably listen on port 21. it would be critical that that port were not exposed to the external net.
thoughts?

As long as your Linux box is behind that router none of your ports - be they FTP, Samba, or whatever - are exposed to the external net.

mDNS which is what is being used here when you do a nemo smb://acker4.local/public is fairly reliable - by far more reliable that the Microsoft way. But it requires two things:

[1] The avahi-daemon service must be running on all your linux machines. To find out:

this morning after I brought the 2d system ("Acker1") online I tried to ping back to the main box ("Acker4").

result: Unkonwn Host.

I returned to the main box ("Acker4") and switched off the internet connection, waited for the disconnect message, and then switched it back on.

after that completed the ping from "Acker1" to "Acker4" was successful.

somebody is timing out and dropping the connect info... the router ? "Acker4" ? or maybe the connection was never properly established on boot-up? tw I'll try doing the disconnect\reconnect thing before I start reading the morning noise

right now I'm wondering if it may be the case that the LMDE system broadcasts is presence to everyone listening on the intranet -- when it connects -- and maybe it's supposed to repeat that once every minute or so. or maybe it's just very slow about getting the message out ? it will be interesting to see what i can ferret out....

this morning I powered off the remote workstation -- "Acker1" and then restarted it.

after that it was unable to ping the main system -- "Acker4"

on Acker4 I switched the internet connection off and back on. after that Acker1 was able to ping Acker4 properly.

aside:

"SMB" = "Server Message Block" -- one of the components of MSFT/Windows that has been a favorite attack vector. It's probably ok to use it within an intranet. Perhaps we'll have a better solution sometime.

Mike, have you tried doing a full power-down and reboot of the router? Amazing how often this solves oddball problems like this. If you can, it might be a good idea to test-run a different router also. How old is the current one?

kevinthefixer wrote:Mike, have you tried doing a full power-down and reboot of the router? Amazing how often this solves oddball problems like this. If you can, it might be a good idea to test-run a different router also. How old is the current one?

it is ASUS RT-N10P

I can display the Client List. right now there are 4 clients i have 192.168.1.228
it shows all kinds of interesting info though

LMDE/2 shows default route and DNS as 192.168.1.1 -- the ASUS Router address. So, if I ping <client> it's the ASUS that should send that to whatever IP address it has that client on at that time...

so,--- we could have a problem in the ASUS -- as you suggest -- or -- LMDE might be holding what it thinks is the IP for a certain client..... i don't know if it does that. the ASUS does have a "RESET" optionon the client list; when I activated that it cut the client list down to just the machines currently connected, --- me, the printer, the general use table box, and some phone someplace....

I do have a new router on order,-- (1) to get dual band RF and all the new security codes, and (2) a bit better range.

Microsoft engineers hate the protocol. Consider what Ned Pyle, principal program manager in the Microsoft Windows Server High Availability and Storage group, had to say about it in a prescient blog in September 2016:

“Stop using SMB1. Stop using SMB1. STOP USING SMB1!... The original SMB1 protocol is nearly 30 years old, and like much of the software made in the 80’s, it was designed for a world that no longer exists. A world without malicious actors, without vast sets of important data, without near-universal computer usage. Frankly, its naivete is staggering when viewed though modern eyes.”